Obi

An obi is the belt-like wrap of fabric that goes around a kimono. Just think of it as a belt that you tie closed. They come in various widths, from formal to casual, and there are lots of ways to tie them. For Bleach shinigami, a fairly narrow obi tied with a simple bow-knot works fine.

Materials
White fabric, about 2 yards
White thread
Cotton batting (optional)
Sewing machine
Fabric scissors
Straight pins

The obi had mixed results. As I mention under the section on hakama construction, I believe the obi could just be the back tie of the hakama, if you make it white, a little bit longer, and maybe a bit wider. We didn’t think of this at first. I thought we’d better put some batting inside the hakama to keep it from bunching up around our waists and cutting in uncomfortably, but this turned out to not be absolutely necessary. We started out planning to make fairly wide obi, about 3 inches wide. FYI, 2 inches wide is plenty, and 1.5 inches might be even better.

Just by turn of events, it ended up that for my obi I was using scrap fabric that was not a nice long even strip, but was uneven, which made the tailing ends of my obi much narrower than the main part. I was worried about it at first, but actually, that feature was what made my obi functional. My friend’s obi had to be redone ultimately because it was too wide to tie neatly. She also preferred that the batting be removed from it when we remade it.

To make the obi we just sewed three long strips of fabric together at the ends, folded the whole thing lengthwise, tucked in the raw edges, and sewed along the length.

For wearing it, we wrapped it once around our waist, starting with the middle of the obi against our bellies, crossed it behind at the small of the back, under the hakama backboard, and tied it in front in a bow.